I stopped by Brooklyn Machine Works to get a box before packing up for Berlin and seen they had a copy of the new Loop Mag. Seven full pages of bike polo and a few other small stuff spread out in the mag too. Tak has some great photos of a few North American female polo players here. Enjoy.

This issue of Loop has The Grime riders on the cover but bike polo players all over the inside. Not pictured here but Riki from Japan has a full page for his Joust polo bike. Then two more full pages of Tokyo Hardcourt Bike Polo. The NYC Bench Minor bike polo tournament gets 5 full pages with a group shot followed by 14 rider shots all of out of towners. Lee, Sean McDonell, Hugo, Ben Hunter, Brian Dillman, John Atwell, Sam Jackson, Matt Lane, Johnny Crash, Tucker Schwinn, Pierre, Clement, Ben Schultz and Kremin.

Anyone that is keeping track, even if just barely, knows that bike polo has been growing in all directions. More players in the places that have been at it for years and more cities starting up clubs in the places that didn’t have regular games one or two years ago. Europe has been doing what looks like the same thing. Where as polo was heavy in the United States and Canada, now it’s definitely heavy in Europe too. I’m still looking forward to playing on a different continent. Maybe London, maybe Milan, or maybe Tokyo!
I missed the 2009 CMWC in Tokyo but by the looks of things bike polo is getting hot in Japan. Of course bike polo is happening in South America and Australia too but like I said, anyone keeping track knows that they’ve had the game going for years. But polo in Japan is new. From looking at the stats of this site I see that Japan is second highest in page views, beating out Canada and United Kingdom nearly combined. From there I searched around and found some sites to get a better picture of what they were putting up. Here are some links to what I found.

LOOP is a new bicycling mag out of Japan and one of the contributing photographers is a friend of mine. Takuya Sakamoto or just “Tak” has been in New York many years as a bike messenger and working photographer. He has a website called New York Bike Dreams.